"I’m a big Marx Brothers fan. And just picking one Marx Brothers film is difficult. But I’ll go with Duck Soup, which has four of the brothers in it –everyone except Gummo. The one is the leader – there’s like a coup of this country called Freedonia – it’s just kind of out there. All the Marx Brothers movies are obviously ridiculous, and rely a lot on visual gags and sort of one-liners. But the comedy is so sort of pure. It is very sort of uncomplicated, simple, and cuts right to – you either like it or you don’t. I’m a little nervous about showing my son The Marx Brothers because comedy has changed so much. And not for the worse — I think in a lot of ways for the better. There are circumstantial comedies… For me, some of my favorite comedy is much more subtle stuff. Stuff that is more situational and circumstantial and character driven than gag driven but this is just old school gag driven comedy and there’s something that’s just so great about that. And The Marx Brothers do it better than anyone."

"Andrea Arnold’s films in general, and particularly this one, just feel so real. They gaze at women living on the outskirts of society, behaving outside conventional morality, without seeming sensational. The way the camera follows its protagonist in this film is so gentle and so unlike the cinematography in films with similar subject matter that are trying to give a piercing revelation of what it’s like for women in desperate circumstances. In Arnold’s film, no matter how deep into the pits we go, I never feel like I’m watching poverty porn. I feel like I’m watching flawed characters play themselves out to their logical conclusion."

"I was brought up on this album. It had a poster in it of naked women on bikes which, you know, in certain parts of Europe I think that’s pretty normal, but in England that’s not quite the case and that was super outrageous. We hung it on our wall. Roy Thomas Baker produced that album so there are loads and loads of dynamics. It’s too quiet in bits and then so loud it takes your face off. From when ‘Mustapha’ starts it lets you believe that the album is going to be a certain way and then halfway through that song it completely changes. It keeps you on your toes. I think all their great albums are like that to some degree, but I think that one is the most Queen of the Queen albums. Or at least the most Roy Thomas Baker of the Queen albums. It’s got ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’ on it, which is a real favourite. I particularly used to like the more playful Queen tracks, and there’s one called ‘Dreamers Ball’ which sounds like swing music, but instead of the big band being all brassy, it’s just Brian May’s guitars."

"It was such a turning point, this album. I remember putting it on the Dansette and 'Purple Haze' coming on, and those opening notes, and going bloody hell I want this. When you hear something that really works for you it's almost not a conscious decision. It's a chemical reaction that your ears and your soul have. I heard it and it was like being grabbed on the inside and told you're going to go with this. You like this, whether you want to or not. I've pretty much always had a copy of this album, and I don't think it does everything that Jimi Hendrix does best, but it does a lot of it. I think he was very smart because he never overdid the solos, certainly not on this album. They're all fairly short songs. And also seeing the cover, back then, it was like wow, here's this black bloke, and he's dressed as a hippy. That was quite a shocking image for then, and you knew it was going to be great, just by looking at it. But it had that terrible lettering on the cover and it said ""Smash Hits"" and you immediately went oh my god, because that was what you had every Christmas, those K-Tel Smash Hits records. You never expected a serious musician, let alone one who played like that, to have that kind of title."

"I really love heavy metal. I’m very open, so I don’t really care about genres and often with heavy metal I just like it. I was a huge fan of many heavy metal bands when I was a kid, the first concert I went to was Gojira and then Mastodon and then Slayer. I was eleven and I really loved it. “None of my friends liked the music and so I remember feeling at home at the shows, because I met people who understood it. It’s so angry without being hostile if you really listen to it, but it can sound hostile to people who don’t understand it. “This is quite a calm song by Mastodon. It’s a childhood memory, but a song that allowed me to discover Mastodon with a more melodic song than most heavy metal bands I knew. I saw them play two times actually. “I try and turn what I love about heavy metal into something that more people can understand, like in songs like “Under The Water” and “The Seed”, the single I just released, is more heavy. I like the weight"

"The connection is kind of obvious! Obviously, I sing for the band and ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ was the reason why I got asked to sing for the band. I sang this song for my American Idol audition about nine years ago and it has a personal significance in that way. “I remember hearing it for the first time. I grew up doing musicals and the theatricality of it resonated with me at a young age, hearing a song that was considered a rock classic but that was theatrical and so vocal, it just really appealed to me. It felt like something and I connected with it. ""I love the different sections of it. Just when you think you've got the song figured out, it switches gears and goes in a totally different direction, or it goes to the opera section - which is totally insane and out there. Then they finish it off with the searing rock section of the song and then it finishes up again, back into the piano-driven, melodic, quiet place. “Much like a play or an opera, ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ has acts, it has different sections and being a performer, I think that just really appealed to me."

"I didn't get into him at all for ages. For years and years I just thought, what is all the fuss about?' I just could not get into it. And then one day someone said: ""Have you listened to Hunky Dory?"". I hadn't checked that out at all. I really got into Hunky Dory. I transcribed and analysed nearly all the songs on it. I got into Low, and I quite like 'Heroes', and Scary Monsters. But there's a lot of stuff I don't like. I could probably list 10 Bowie songs that I think are amazing, and the rest of it I'm not too bothered about. I'm really obsessed with him as a character, as an artist. To me he's incredibly impressive and really exciting, his relentless drive to reinvent himself. Probably one of the most inspiring people I can think of. But musically, it's not quite as abundant. That last album: it's quite weird. I was really into Death Grips, he was really into Death Grips, and Kendrick Lamaar as well. It's an album that owes a lot to those guys, but then it's also got a saxophone player on it. This track 'Girl Loves Me', he uses the language from Clockwork Orange. It's just a brilliant idea."